Scruton Roger. Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

Oxford University Press, 2011. — 186 p. — (Very Short Introductions). — ISBN 978–0–19–955952–7; 978–0–19–922975–8.Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can beexhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive it.
Yet judgements of beauty concern matters of taste, and maybe taste has no rational foundation. If so, how do we explain the exalted
place of beauty in our lives, and why should we lament the fact — if fact it is — that beauty is vanishing from our world? And is it the case, as so many writers and artists since Baudelaire and Nietzsche have suggested, that beauty and goodness may diverge, so that a thing can be beautiful precisely in respect of its immorality?
Moreover, since it is in the nature of tastes to differ, how can a standard erected by one person’s taste be used to cast judgement
on another’s? How, for example, can we pretend that one type of music is superior or inferior to another when comparative judgements merely reflect the taste of the one who makes them?Judging beauty
Human beauty
Natural beauty
Everyday beauty
Artistic beauty
Taste and order
Art and eros
The flight from beauty
Concluding thoughts
Notes and further reading